This was my 13th cruise, first to Alaska & turned out to be very lucky!! We flew Air Canada to San Francisco on May 9 arriving at 3:00 pm. We found our prearranged Super Shuttle van ($17) & took it to the Holiday Inn Express Fishermans Wharf which was a nice hotel with a great included breakfast. We walked down to Pier 39, shopped, saw the sea lions, ate, then walked over to the cable car station where we took a couple of rides on them as we hadn't done that the last time we were there. The next morning we walked to Pier 35 as it was only 6/10 miles away.

Boarding was pretty good except for an incident with the gangway because of the wind & rain that delayed us. When we got on board we received our welcome drink then headed to our Concierge Class cabin 8112 which was quite handy to the stairs & elevators. We loved our balcony CC cabin with it's perks such as fresh fruit, bathrobes & flowers in the cabin & bathroom.

This itinerary appealed to us as it left from San Francisco, a lovely city, passed under the Golden Gate bridge plus had 2 sea days at the beginning allowing us to become familiar with the ship. After the lifeboat drill (no life jackets required) we had an informal gathering of our Cruise Critic Roll Call on deck 10 aft. Read more